Current Best Practice

A recommendation at the top of the holarchy, never a law — refined by the experience of everyone who works under it.

It is a status rather than a thing: the standing that every convention in the Book of Conventions is held at, and by extension the standing of any practice this body asks anyone to follow. Two clauses carry it. At the top of the holarchy — this is the best known way, offered by those who have gone furthest, and it is not a suggestion you may ignore without cost (Holarchy, Our Core Ways). Never a law — it does not bind, it has no enforcement, and the moment something better is found it is replaced rather than defended (Everything Is Current Best Understanding).

Holding both at once is the difficulty, and the reason the phrase exists. A practice held too loosely is not a practice: if every writer settles naming for themselves there is no shared body of writing, only adjacent ones (One canonical home per concept, Name the Concept in the Singular). A practice held too tightly becomes a law, then an identity, then something a body protects instead of improving (Institutional Idolatry, Idolatry (of the word and of the doctrine)). The status is a deliberate middle: follow it, because it is the best we know; and be the one who improves it when you find better (Every Defect Is A Gift, Continuous Improvement).

The second clause tells you who improves it. Refined by the experience of all who write here — not by whoever wrote it first, and not by a committee. A convention earns its place by being what a new writer would otherwise get wrong, and it is retired the day it stops being that (The LIØNSBERG Workshop, How A Pattern Enters The Language, Prune).

It belongs to a family of three and the differences are worth keeping. Current Best Understanding is what we presently hold to be true. Current Best Articulation is the best wording we have yet found for it. Current best practice is what we presently recommend doing. A thing can be well understood, badly worded, and well practised, and knowing which of the three is failing is most of the work of improving anything (Soak, Progressive canonization).

Also called: current best practice · the status every convention is held at Stands on: Current Best Understanding · The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions · Everything Is Current Best Understanding Opens onto: Current Best Articulation · Our Core Ways · Progressive canonization · The LIØNSBERG Workshop · Continuous Improvement · Every Defect Is A Gift · Institutional Idolatry · Soak · Prune · Holarchy In play: beyond — the standing of nearly everything this body writes down Sources: LIØNSBERG Wiki Books/The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions — the book's one line of prose, which states the status for every convention it holds (unmarked) · lionsberg.wiki: The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions Open: No page in the canon stands at this name; the definition exists as a single sentence inside the Book of Conventions, which links it as though a page were there. · The three current best terms are used across the corpus without any page distinguishing them; the distinction on this page is drawn here rather than found written.